Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), and Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.

As I've mentioned elsewhere on ShukerNature, even
as a child I enjoyed cutting out and saving newspaper articles reporting
unusual or controversial animals. Pasted in a series of scrapbooks, these humble
offerings were the foundation of what gradually expanded during subsequent
years into what is now my personal and still-expanding archive of material on
cryptozoology and animal anomalies.

One of these early documents was a short newspaper
report concerning a supposedly new type of bird dubbed the ogridge. Back in
those very early, formative years as a budding cryptozoological archivist,
however, my youthful zeal for saving such reports was not always matched by my
remembering to note their complete bibliographical details. And so it was with
this particular cutting: I'd noted down that it had appeared on 16 November
1972, but I'd neglected to
record the name of the newspaper that had published it. However, I do recall
that the newspaper in question was one of two London-based red-top tabloids –
either the Sun or the Daily Mirror. So if I ever do need a full
reference for it, this shouldn't be too difficult to track down.

Anyway, the report itself reads as follows:

THE OGRIDGE

New birds are rare these days but one
new bird is the ogridge. The ogridge is bred from the partridge but its
markings are a lot bigger and bolder. It is gentle, unlike a mere partridge
which pecks other birds to death out of sheer boredom. And, to top it all, the
ogridge is a much better sport. Partridges walk away from the gun. The ogridge
knows better – it flies. The ogridge has been bred by Lincolnshire game breeders, Ormsby Games. They said
yesterday that it is in great demand, with day-old chicks selling at 80p. After
all, ogridges may be harder to shoot, but they're easier to live with.

Obviously, the notion of a new bird greatly
intrigued me, and in the years that followed I sought to discover more about
this avian novelty, seeking references to it in books, journals, library
archives, etc, but all to no avail. Not a mention of the ogridge could be found
by me anywhere (this was of course back in those grim, dark years before the
instantly-available plethora of online information proffered by the internet
existed!). So recalcitrantly elusive was the enigmatic ogridge, coupled by the
somewhat whimsical, tongue-in-cheek write-up of the lone newspaper report on it
that I had preserved back in 1972, that I eventually began to wonder if it was
nothing more than a journalistic joke, created to amuse its readers but not to
be taken seriously.

It was now the late 1980s, and one day I was
browsing through some books in a local charity shop when I noticed a pile of
magazines nearby. Idly flicking through them, I came upon a few issues of Bird
Watching. Knowing that this magazine often carries reports and articles
concerning rarities sighted in Britain or elsewhere, I started looking through them. One
was the February 1988 issue, and as I thumbed through its pages I came upon an
article by Ian Wallace entitled 'Whirring Wings and Cackles', whose subject was
partridges in Britain. And there, in a full-colour plate depicting the
various types of partridge on record from the U.K., was a portrait of…an ogridge!

Needless to say, I lost no time in purchasing this
precious publication that had verified the reality of the evanescent ogridge,
and when I read the full article back home I discovered that it was a
specially-bred hybrid of the red-legged partridge Alectoris rufa (a
non-native species originally introduced into Great Britain from France in 1673
as an additional game bird to the native grey partridge Perdix perdix,
and which has been successfully breeding here since 1790 in a fully-naturalised state) and the chukar A.
chukar (another foreigner, native to Asia and southeastern Europe, and first
introduced into Britain as yet another target for game bird shooters in 1972 –
along with releases of its hybrid progeny, the ogridge).

The mystery was finally solved. The ogridge did
indeed exist, and was a red-leg x chukar crossbreed. However, as I learnt from
Wallace's article, it was also something of an albatross – metaphorically
speaking! – in that it had proved to be a rather undesirable addition to the
British avifauna. This was because the red-legged partridge's gene pool here
was becoming increasingly diluted by such hybridisation, the resulting
interspecific gene flow potentially threatening the continuing existence of Britain's
pure-bred red-leg stock, the latter now having to compete for survival with
both the chukar and their crossbred creation the ogridge (which apparently was
expected to be sterile but subsequently proved otherwise). Certainly in recent
years red-leg numbers in Britain have declined.

As a result, the licence for permitting the
introduction into the wild here of ogridges and pure-bred chukars was not
renewed when it expired in October 1988, and all such introductions were
officially banned in 1992. However, there are still plenty of both forms out
there, especially in southern Britain, and escapes from captivity no doubt also
occur from time to time.

Even for twitchers, their presence is problematic,
due to their great outward similarities. Indeed, it took several years before
any fairly constant plumage differences could be verified – prior to then, even
certain birdwatching field-guides were depicting them incorrectly. Perhaps the
most evident distinguishing characteristic between red-leg, ogridge, and chukar
is their solid-black throat gorget and their throat colour immediately above
it.

From left to right: close-up of the
head and necklace patterns of the rock partridge Alectoris graeca (not occurring in the UK but native to southeastern
Europe and closely related to the chukar and red-leg), chukar, ogridge, and
red-leg – click to enlarge it (original illustration source/copyright holder
unknown to me, but illustration featured in Bird Watching, February
1988)

In the red-leg, the gorget possesses a deep
'necklace' of speckles immediately below it and predominantly white plumage
above it. In the ogridge, conversely, the depth of necklace present below the
gorget is much-reduced, whereas immediately above the gorget is a rufous-buff
crescent (though as with all hybrids, there is much variation upon this basic
theme!). And in the chukar, there is normally no necklace at all below the
gorget (though a few necklace-sporting specimens have been recorded), whereas
immediately above it is a pronounced rufous-buff crescent.

In spite of its modern-day familiarity to
ornithologists and game bird hunters alike, online coverage of the ogridge is
surprisingly sparse. When preparing this present ShukerNature article, I could
only find a handful of reports appertaining to it, and not a single ogridge
illustration anywhere. Consequently, and presumably for the reasons outlined
above, the ogridge failed to sustain, or possibly even stimulate, the degree of
interest and enthusiasm predicted for it in my newspaper cutting from 1972 –
the year in which the first specimens were released into the British
countryside.

Not such an easy bird to live with, after all?

Complete colour plate featuring the chukar, ogridge, red-leg, and two other game birds (common quail and grey partridge) – click to enlarge it (original
illustration source/copyright holder unknown to me, but plate featured in Bird
Watching, February 1988)

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